LACMA Art + Technology Lab grant recipient Sarah Rosalena Uncovers the Contributions of Women in Astronomy Through the Lens of Indigenous Cosmology

Sarah Rosalena: In All Directions is the first of three films from Hyundai Artlab centered around the Art + Technology Lab at LACMA – one of the museum’s unique programs that was revitalized through a long-term partnership between Hyundai Motor and LACMA beginning in 2015. This series showcases bold experimentation and cross-disciplinary innovation fostered by the Lab through the eyes of three artists. 

This first film delves into how Rosalena’s groundbreaking projects, Exit Points and Standard Candle, were enhanced by research opportunities provided through the LACMA Art + Technology Lab. Collaborating with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory allowed Rosalena to investigate the historical contributions of women "computers" in astronomy, examining their crucial roles in early measurements of celestial bodies. 

This experience enabled her to reproduce their labor, further exploring the intersection of technology, gender, and the influence of data and Indigenous lands in shaping our understanding of the cosmos. By bridging these realms, she invites viewers to reconsider how we perceive space and our place within it.

Watch the full film on Hyundai Artlab

Miu Miu and Art Basel Paris present 'Tales & Tellers,' a project by Artist Goshka Macuga

Miu Miu collaborates with Art Basel Paris’ Public Program to present Tales & Tellers, an innovative project envisioned by artist Goshka Macuga and curated by Elvira Dyangani Ose, with exhibition design by OMA. Presented at the historic Palais d’Iéna and running until October 20th, 2024, the project dig into women’s narratives and experiences, using a mix of film, video installations, and live performances. Actors reenact moments from Miu Miu’s past film collaborations and runway shows, blending these stories with real-life perspectives to craft an immersive narrative. The project underscores the Italian brand’s commitment to exploring femininity through the intersection of fashion, film, and art.

Building on Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales initiative, which since 2011 has provided female filmmakers a platform to express diverse ideas of womanhood, Tales & Tellers incorporates various media to highlight women’s stories. The performances, enhanced by video works, bring past collaborations to life as actors embody characters from earlier Miu Miu films, transforming the space into a living, multi-dimensional narrative. These reinterpretations offer the audience a fresh view of memories and experiences, breathing new life into familiar stories.

In addition to these performances, Tales & Tellers screens the complete collection of films from the Women’s Tales series, accompanied by panel discussions featuring directors and artists like Chloë Sevigny, Meriem Bennani, Laura Citarella, and others. These discussions not only explore the themes in their films but also delve into the creators' personal histories and artistic inspirations, offering insights into the storytelling process and celebrating women as the keepers of their own stories. The event fosters a dialogue about how these narratives shape and reflect the world.

Materiality is the Impetus of Perrotin's Pacific Abstractions in Los Angeles

text by Mia Milosevic

Materiality lays at the center of Perrotin’s Pacific Abstractions. The use of material fluctuates between artists, but the physicality of abstraction remains distinctly intact. 

Lee Bae uses five different forms of wood to construct his charcoal ink on paper. An ode to movement embodies the work, where motion is inextricable from risk. Each charcoal stroke is entirely reliant on the mobility of Lee’s artistic hand—no gray-hued ribbon is ever erased or redone. The movement of material is the final product. 

Naotaka Hiro’s corporeal paintings are imbued with a kind of where-the-wild-things-are sexual innuendo. The work’s technicalities deconstruct the body, and then reinstate it with a phallic abstraction that is just discernible enough to make the body knowable. Two perfect, symmetrical holes perforate the bottom of his Untitled (Uproar). These circular lesions mark the negative space the artist inserted his legs into as a processual requirement. The alteration of the canvas threatens prescribed limitations of material—Hiro’s anatomical segmenting shatters the fourth wall of space. 

Kazuo Kadonaga’s Wood No. 5 Cl is an intricately constructed log made from paper-thin slices of real wood. The veneer slicer he used to create these vellums pays homage to his upbringing in forestry. The trunk’s growth rings explicitly mimic the surreality of Earth’s extraordinary constructions, made with the caliber of precision and detail generally credited to the hands of the divine. Alas, we may come to question Kadonaga’s mortal statehood. The portrait of an axed tree excavates a visceral reaction: Should we mourn the losses wrought by Big Paper or must we instead celebrate post-natural invention? By virtue of materiality, reincarnation is imminent. 

Pacific Abstractions is on view through November 9 @ Perrotin in Los Angeles, 5036 W Pico Blvd

Craig Richards' 2024 Houghton Festival Pays Homage to Andrew Weatherall

Tantrum Stage



text by Lara Monro
photographs by Khroma Collective


Since the 2000s, Houghton Hall, an expansive Georgian residence built in the 1720s for Britain’s first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, has gained international renown as a world-class sculpture park, featuring permanent works by Richard Long, Ryan Gander,  Rachel Whiteread, and James Turrell, to name a few. 

The Hall’s sculpture park is further accompanied by an annual solo exhibition program showcasing esteemed artists such as Damien Hirst and Anish Kapoor. This year, Sir Antony Gormley’s Time Horizon places 100 sculptures across 300 acres, with Dame Magdalene Odundo’s artworks simultaneously positioned within the state rooms. 

Stephen Cox “Interior Space”
copyright Houghton Hall

In 2017, Houghton Hall complemented its art collection by adding Houghton Festival, the underground dance music festival established, crafted and curated by Craig Richards. It instantly earned acclaim for its five-star lineup, sound systems, lighting, and reputation as a hedonistic playground (thanks to its rare 24-hour license), with Mixmag hailing it as “a festival the UK is lucky to have” and The Independent calling it a “utopian retreat like no other.” As a result, each August, discerning music enthusiasts of all ages, nationalities, and backgrounds converge to immerse themselves in a musical Valhalla that knows no pause.

However, Houghton is so much more than just a musical odyssey. The festival and its music stages, impressive as standalone sonic and visual installations, also coincide with a rich visual arts program that is integral to the Houghton experience. For Richards, the intention behind the 24-hour festival is not merely to host a round-the-clock party, but to create a space where the interplay of sound, art and the shifts of dawn, dusk and all things nature can be profoundly appreciated. He explains, “it’s about the beauty of sunrise and sunset, experimentation, and savoring the festival’s diverse offerings at any hour of the day or night."  

Now fifty-seven, Richards reflects on his impressive career as a DJ, which he describes as accidental. After spending a year in Los Angeles at nineteen years old, where he immersed himself in the vibrant Downtown LA music scene at iconic parties like Dirt Box and Power Tools, he moved to London in 1987 to study illustration at Central Saint Martins and went on to an MA at the Royal College of Art.

“It was during my time in the States I bought a lot of records. I had always collected soul, funk, disco, and reggae records from before I moved to London.” During his time at Saint Martins there was a coffee bar at the Charing Cross Road building—incidentally, the first place the Sex Pistols ever played. “Naturally, it was the perfect spot to organize parties, as was Soho, where it was easy to acquire a hundred-person basement for the night to have a party, Soho was a very different place then. Before long, I was getting paid to DJ instead of just earning a taxi fare home, and that was it, really.” Richards’ ‘accidental’ career quickly gained momentum, establishing him as a key figure in the global music scene. Yet, even as his sonic reputation flourished, he remained committed to creative pursuits beyond the decks, with a deep engagement in painting, drawing, photography, and silkscreen printing. 

Craig Richards "Untitled"

This dual commitment to both music and visual arts has become a defining characteristic of Houghton. Blending auditory and visual experiences, the festival has become Richards’ canvas, allowing him to explore his artistic creativity in dynamic and innovative ways. His imprint is everywhere, from the festival’s poster designs that feature his original artwork, to a number of visual installations at a selection of the music stages, to the lineup penned in his unmistakable handwriting. 

But the creativity doesn’t stop there. Richards has also commissioned a series of site-specific installations over the past eight years. Large, steel sculptural pieces have been created from his drawings, none more poignant than the 8-meter-tall sculpture dedicated to the late Andrew Weatherall. This iron structure, birthed from a series of sketches Richards created in 2017, stands proudly at the festival’s epicenter, paying homage to Weatherall’s immense talent and influence in the contemporary music world; 

 

Craig Richards "Andrew"

 

“Andrew was one of the first people who inspired me to become a DJ,” Richards reflects. “Everything he did, from Sonic Blood Sugar to his presence at gigs, left a mark. Many of us in this industry find ourselves asking, ‘What would Andrew do?’ It’s a tragedy that the captain of our ship was taken from us. The sculpture’s grandeur reflects his lasting impact and the fact that he will always be a part of this festival and the music scene.”

For Richards, this sculpture embodies the depth and breadth of Houghton’s offerings, which he is proud to have extended far beyond music. Its diverse program includes talks and installations that truly enrich the experience. The Armadillo, a timber arts pavilion commissioned for Houghton 2024 in partnership with the architectural firm Unknown Works, hosted an array of talks and performances such as London based DJ Anna Wall’s ambient music set. The Pinter stage, nestled amongst an idyllic orchard, was graced by Swiss pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch who shared a mind-sound and soul-altering performance while American beatboxer, comedian and musician Reggie Watts, performed a light-hearted yet exceptionally crafted sketch, perfect for a Sunday afternoon and slightly tired and tender festival crowd. The Warehouse, a repurposed barn, was transformed into a digital art space by UVA who showcased Present Shock II, a mind-bending installation created in collaboration with Robert Del Naja. Deep within the forest, Natural Symphony’s interactive festival forest design; a sound and light installation that uses the natural biorhythms of plants to create music and visuals, offered a moment of wonder, grounding and tranquility. Meanwhile, a quaint ‘noddy train,’ accompanied by art historians, would transport the more adventurous to James Turrell’s Skyspace, an immersive sculpture positioned in an elevated oak box that encourages visitors to sit at dusk or dawn and enjoy the Norfolk sky cycles of blues and purples. 

 
 

While Houghton has evolved into a celebrated festival, its journey has been anything but linear. The festival has managed to face and overcome significant setbacks, including a last-minute cancellation in 2019 due to extreme weather and two subsequent years lost to the pandemic. That it has endured without government or commercial funding is a testament to its resilience and the strong community it fosters. For Richards, the pursuit of something meaningful far outweighs the lure of profit. “When you prioritize significance over financial gain, creativity naturally flourishes,” he explains. Richards’ determination and perseverance may also be attributed to his enduring optimism, a quality he credits to his parents and their appreciation for the art of presentation; “my parents were both cabin crew in the 1950s, they instilled in me a deep understanding of how to do things properly—how to create an experience,” Richards reflects. “They were products of a pivotal era, epitomized by events like the 1951 Festival of Britain, which celebrated art and embodied a spirit of optimism. This outlook has profoundly shaped me; I’ve inherited their belief in making things as exceptional as possible, and it continues to drive me forward.”

Richards’ meticulous attention to detail, coupled with his passion and craftsmanship, are clearly influenced by this familial legacy of hard work and dedication. And, Houghton’s authenticity is undeniably an extension of this. Although Richards acknowledges that the visual arts program has yet to reach the level of its musical counterpart, his optimism assures him that it is only a matter of time. “With patience, I am confident this will be achieved,” he says. “It will happen organically as we gradually build a bigger community—a group of believers who share in this vision.”

 

Reggie Watts at Pinters Stage

 

Highlights From The Inaugural Aspen Art Fair At The Historic Jerome Hotel

In the former silver mining town of Aspen, Colorado, art week brings an exotically curious international crowd. Billionaire collector home tours, dinners, exhibitions, activations, and art fairs take over the tiny, quaint city nine-thousand feet in the Rockies. The air is thin, rare, and rich in this alpine ecosystem of nature that meets the nostalgia of the American West with the hyper-commerce of the 21st century. A newcomer on the scene, The Aspen Art Fair, feels like it's been there all along. Ideally situated at the historic five-star Jerome Hotel, which opened in 1889 and is now part of Auberge Resorts’ portfolio, the fair presented thirty international exhibitors and curatorial projects from more than twelve countries. Cozily tucked into bottom-floor bungalows, the fair follows the grand tradition of hotel art fairs, like the Gramercy International Art Fair at the Gramercy Hotel in New York and Felix at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.  Co-founded by art world veterans Becca Hoffman and Robert Chase, the Aspen Art Fair included a stellar list of galleries, including Galerie Gmurzynska from Zürich, Perrotin, and Southern Guild from Cape Town, South Africa. With the general art market in a post-pandemic slump, Hoffman, who is also the founder of the women-led 74th Arts, which organizes global art fair experiences in cities around the globe, knows full well the power of boutique. “We need to rethink how we connect on culture, in citywide environments. How do we have more intimate opportunities for engagement, education, connection, and commerce?” Hoffman—tough as nails and ultra-savvy—told us on the third to last day of the fair. With Aspen being 1,390 times smaller than the population of New York and a super concentration of centimillionaires, Aspen is the perfect environment for art and commerce. With works ranging from Picasso to Paola Pivi to Fairfield Porter and Richard Diebenkorn, the Aspen Art Fair is both refreshing and exhilarating.

HOT AND BOTHERED GROUP SHOW COMES TO AN END

Marielle Chabal, 'QUEENS project. Moodboards #1 and #2', 2024, 'Hot and bothered (Nightmares in a bed full of pillows)' group show, 2024, Galerie Alberta Pane, Paris

Completing their exhibition July 20th, The Alberta Pane Gallery presents the group show Hot and bothered (Nightmares in a bed full of pillows), featuring the work of three international artists: Guendalina Cerruti, Marielle Chabal, and Davide Sgambaro. Gathered together for the first time in a group exhibition, the works of Cerruti, Chabal, and Sgambaro focus on the young generation’s existential concerns. Through various media the artists investigate similar issues, trying to unveil doubts and anxieties linked to an uncertain future. With their practices they attempt to propose new solutions to contemporary society’s disillusions, while using an absurd and sarcastic approach. Each art piece is unique and varies in execution, yet clearly displays their unified message through multiple different artistic approaches that manage to convey the evolution of self, starting at the absurdity and wonder of childhood to a more hollow and bitterly aware adulthood. The group exhibition is an exploration of identity and the growing pains that come with leaving your youth while still managing to carry that sense of creativity throughout your journey.

Hot and Bothered is on view until July 20th @ Alberta Pane Gallery 44-47, rue de Montmorency 75003, Paris, France, for more information, visit their website

Sharon Stone's Eternal Failure Is An Eternal Success

Courtesy Gallery 181 Fremont Residences San Francisco/Moanalani Jeffrey Photo Agency

John Steinbeck once said, “San Francisco is a golden handcuff with the key thrown away.” Indeed, San Francisco is a beautiful prison of imagination—a city so unusual it seems unreal. For the inimitable actress and now esteemed painter Sharon Stone, San Francisco was a place to die and be reborn as an artist. In her new exhibition, “My Eternal Failure,” on view at Gallery 181 at San Francisco's 181 Fremont Residences until August 31st, these days of vulnerability are explored in a series of large-scale, abstract paintings that exemplify Stone’s adeptness at shape, color, and composition.  Heartbreak and a 2001 brain injury in San Francisco allowed Stone to see colors in a whole new way—her prismatic kaleidoscopic palette is like a psychotropic wellspring. “I want this exhibition to serve as a vehicle for self-forgiveness, and I hope it can help others do the same by letting go of societal stigmas and imposed perceptions,” says Stone. “In this way, failures become sources of strength, and to face them is to keep growing. The exhibition’s title My Eternal Failure is freeing for me.”

 

Jester, by Sharon Stone, 2023 (acrylic on canvas), 36” x 18”

 

Each Person Is A Portal: Read Our Interview of Seffa Klein on the Occasion of Her Solo Exhibition @ Galerie Poggi in Paris →

 
 

The human race has been gazing at the stars with a sense of wonderment since time immemorial. These cogitations have inspired the creation of everything from religious mythologies to monumental earthworks to marine navigation, space navigation and innumerable inventions in between. It is a universal human experience where most of us encounter our first existential ponderings and Seffa Klein is no exception. What is exceptional about her experience is that she comes from a family of artists whose careers have been dedicated to exploring universal truths in the realms of art, science, and spirituality, which has afforded her the unique opportunity to engage with these profound questions further in the light of day rather than extinguishing them. While most of us are told to invest our time and energy in more realistic endeavors, the Klein family is deeply rooted in the belief that this is as real as it gets. Gallerist Jérôme Poggi recognized this unique quality of the Klein family as one of artists who foster each other’s practices rather than competing with one another, which inspired him to curate a solo exhibition of Seffa Klein’s works alongside selected works from Yves Klein, Rotraut, Marie Raymond, and Günther Uecker, who are respectively her grandparents, great-grandparent, and great-uncle. See the exhibition before it closes tomorrow, July 13. Read more.

Devon Dejardin's Pareidolia Is A Reflection of Your Inner Psyche @ Carl Kostyál in Stockholm

 
 

Devon Dejardin’s new solo exhibition of paintings and sculptures takes its name from the strange and universal phenomenon wherein we see faces in abstract imagery. In a broader sense, pareidolia is the perception of scrutable objects in any kind of nebulous stimulus. We see animals in cloud formations and hear voices in white noise. From Rorschach’s inkblot tests, to hidden messages in a record played backwards, to Jesus Christ on a piece of toast, there are endless examples of our unconscious tendency to discern meaning and order in the face of chaos. For Dejardin, these works are guardians. They draw together elements of various faiths and belief systems. What you see when you look at any of these pieces may differ depending on your own belief systems, your relationship to art history, the conversation you were just having, and your emotional wellbeing. You might find that when you step away and come back to any given work that you can’t remember if you’ve seen it before or if you’re in fact looking at a new painting. Layer by layer, the works reflect aspects of our inner psyche back at us, like mirrored building blocks that reveal the ever shifting unconscious mind as it wanders around in real time.

Pareidolia is on view through July 21st @ Carl Kostyál Hospitalet, Sjökvarnsbacken 15, 131 71 Nacka, Stockholm

Read A Conversation Between Artists Darius Airo and Jon Pylypchuk on the Occasion of Airo's Solo Exhibition →

 
 

Between the minutia and the mirage of our fragmented contemporary existence, artists Darius Airo and Jon Plypchuk both create work imbued with a humorous and ironic darkness masked by playfulness. An inside joke, a half forgotten dream, a song lyric, abstracted figures caught between the waveforms of television static or the rain-drenched glass of a car windshield—our brains continually try to make sense of the world like an undecoded cypher. In Airo’s recent paintings and pastels, presented in the exhibition Mickey’s Mirror (opening May 25 at Abigail Ogilvy gallery in Los Angeles, curated by Josh White—whitebox.la), making sense of the world requires clever conceptual conceit of internal mirrors and the abstracted visages of iconic cartoon characters. In the following conversation, Airo and Plypchuk discuss how the world around them is absorbed into their work. Read more.

MSCHF Presents Art 2 @ Perrotin in Los Angeles

MSCHF presents Art 2, their latest exhibition and second solo show with Perrotin, which is being featured at their Los Angeles location. A compilation of some of their most prominent works, what stands most strikingly at the center of the gallery is the 2004 PT Cruiser which made its way across the United States. An understandable $19.99 could earn the average citizen rights to the car’s keys, prompting an all-american car chase which found its end in Truckee, California. MSCHF’s notorious, oversized shoes make a recurring appearance throughout the exhibition, which the product’s founders claim to “haunt the gallery.”

An Ikea-esque contraption stands assumingly amidst the chaos–it’s a sink made from standard hardware. One of the sink pieces was installed in the bathroom of the MET in New York City–so, MSCHF now has a permanent installation in one of the most renowned museums in the world. Lining one of the gallery walls are 249 copies of Picasso’s infamous La Poisson, which is a small wooden sculpture of a fish. The original stands among them, but the viewer may never know which one really laid in the hands of the great Spanish painter. Regardless, buyers receive an official bidding certificate which directly replicates the one MSCHF founders received when they successfully bid for the wooden object at a Christie’s auction. There’s no need to sue for copyright infringement. Near the entrance of the gallery is a Botero–once a portrait of a jarringly corpulent businessman has been visibly edited into a skinnier version. MSCHF retitled the work Ozempic (Botched Fumador de Cigarillos). 

Art 2 is on view through June 1 @ Perrotin, 5036 West Pico Boulevard Los Angeles

SPY Projects Presents Unrequited Group Show: An Eternally Recontextualized Assemblage of Works @ the Former Brooke Alexander Gallery in New York

Pietro Alexander’s SPY Projects, a Los Angeles-based gallery that has developed a reputation for recognizing young, emerging talent both local and international since its inception in 2021 hosts their Unrequited group show at 59 Wooster Street. Not just another SoHo loft, the building—the very floor, in fact, once housed the Brooke Alexander Gallery, which opened its first exhibition in the space nearly forty years ago and worked with a number of artists who have gone on to become legends, influencing the art scene in New York and beyond. It’s a natural meeting place between East and West coasts, and a fitting home for SPY Projects’ New York debut, since the eponymous gallerist Brooke Alexander’s brother was the artist Peter Alexander, a pioneering figure of the Light and Space movement in California.

As much as we should know what an artwork is—what’s placed in front of us, contained within a frame, defined by a title and tombstone—there’s always something that seems to escape, an uncontrollable excess of meaning beyond what anyone, even the artist could predict. Because ultimately, the substance of it all is continually created anew and brought into being through every encounter between the viewer and the work itself. As a result, even the most rigorous or tightly structured artwork remains porous and in flux, incorporating shifting social contexts, feelings, and personal histories.

So, if it can’t be controlled, why fight it? Curator Sara Apple encourages you to let go of the Sisyphean struggle to reconcile vision and meaning with the murky, malleable world. The exhibition is not an endpoint, the final realization of a concept, but an embarkation, an embrace of the unrequited to welcome the larger possibilities of experience. This extends from the artists—selected less because they fit an aesthetic mold or illustrate a particular idea, but out of organic connections—to the structure of the show itself, which hosts events and performances throughout its duration. By opening up the exhibition while supporting its full potential, all these disparate strands can be brought together, encouraged to develop into the unknown and unexpected, and become something more in the process.

Unrequited includes works by Peter Alexander, Malik Al Maliki, Katherine Auchterlonie, Stefan Bondell, Cristine Brache, Sasha Filimonov, Chris Lloyd, Kay Kasparhauser, Alison Peery, Raymond Pettibon, and Montana Simone. The show is on view through May 31 @ 59 Wooster Street, New York

 
 

Andrés Anza Chosen As Winner of the 2024 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize

 
 

Awarded for his work “I only know what I have seen,” 2023. Andrés Anza was chosen from thirty finalists by a distinguished jury composed of leading figures from the worlds of design, architecture, journalism, criticism, and museum curatorship, including Magdalene Odundo, Minsuk Cho, Olivier Gabet and Abraham Thomas.

This year’s edition of the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft prize presents a selection of works that feature organic and biomorphic forms that push materials to their physical limits. Many of the works repurpose found or recycled materials and there is a focus on the elevation and transformation of the everyday. All thirty of the shortlisted works will be exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris from May 15th through June 9th. The exhibition will also be available to view online and documented through an exhibition catalogue.

Andrés’ life-size ceramic sculpture has an arresting and almost human presence in the exhibition. Its anthropomorphic form – allowing it to seem at once figurative and abstract – is intricately constructed using thousands of individual ceramic protrusions. These tiny spikes make up five puzzle pieces, which have been assembled with an almost architectural intention and precision.

The jury observed that this work defies time and cultural context, drawing upon ancient, archaeological forms but also tracing a post-digital aesthetic that sees ceramics absorbing the most defining influences of our time.

Read an Interview of Cammie Staros on the Occasion of Her Exhibition @ SCAD Museum of Art →

Image courtesy of the artist and SCAD.

Cammie Staros’ Sunken City featured at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Museum of Art through June 24 reinvents our relationships to the traditional historical narrative. Referencing antiquities against the expansiveness of time, Staros positions iconic relics as vessels with which to unite history and the present moment. Her aquarium virtines, which house seemingly anthropomorphic vases, are manifested as self-sustaining biomes aptly referencing the nuances of the lifetime. Staros’ exhibition uniquely encapsulates the passage of time, while simultaneously illuminating the role of the object in the context of human systems. Her modernization, yet simultaneous preservation, of the iconic relic speaks to the primal instinctual basis of a commodity-driven culture and the modern conceptualization of value. Read more.

Sunken City is organized by SCAD Museum of Art curator Ben Tollefson and presented as part of SCAD deFINE ART 2024.

Human Intuition and Artificial Intelligence Collide in Sparks @ Future Gallery in Berlin

Sparks, a group exhibition featuring works by Rush Baker IV, Kévin Bray, Amalie Jakobsen, Chanel Khoury, Anselm Reyle, Vickie Vainionpää, and Jack Warne, delves into emergent artistic processes, from Augmented Reality to collaborative AI and simulated asteroid mining. It offers insights into the diverse and imaginative techniques these artists employ, such as Bray’s collaboration with AI to meld countless versions of his original hand-drawn sketches processed by a generative engine, and Vainionpää’s use of code in her oil paintings as a medium to create infinite relationships between diameter, curve, and entanglement. Reyle’s works are characterized by the use of various found objects that have been removed from their original function, altered visually, and recontextualized. Remnants of consumer society, discarded materials, symbols of urbanity, and industrial change play a central role in his oeuvre.

Sparks is on view through June 1st at Future Gallery, Schöneberger Ufer 59, 10785 Berlin.

John Valadez Extends the Chicano Arts Movement in Chaos Anime @ Luis de Jesus Los Angeles

ocean scene John Valadez chaos beach

John Valadez, Chaos, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.

A trailblazer of the early Chicano Arts Movement in the 1970s and 80s, John Valadez’s work has come to define an iconography of Chicano experience in the city by catalyzing its changing dynamics and reconstructing a mythical allegory that speaks to an alternate vision. Through a multidisciplinary practice spanning 45 years, and encompassing documentary photography and portraiture, public murals, paintings, and pastel works, Valadez has cultivated a style that transcends genre designations. Never settling into one box, his work evokes a fluidity between multiple cultures and visual lexicons, effectively mirroring the unsettled experience of the Chicano identity. Valadez continues to pursue politically engaged work—a persistent voice championing generations of Chicano and Latinx communities.

John Valadez: Chaos Anime presents new paintings that address the shifting global dynamics and social climates facing new generations of Chicanos today, alongside recent works that revisit earlier themes. Together, the works exhibit the breadth of the artist’s social commentaries and further contextualize his lauded approach to painting. Drawing from current events, cultural histories, city life, and such experiences filtered through lucid dreaming, Valadez implements realism, mannerism, abstraction, and montage as a vehicle for allegory and satire to ignite a myriad of socio-political conversations. Themes of invisible borders, sublime skies, tempestuous seas, and juxtapositions between reality, dreams, and the natural world versus the consequences of human interferences, are but some of the constants throughout the trove of Valadez’s urban proverbs. A pivotal moment in Valadez’s new body of work is his extension of Chicano Movement principles, speaking to global matters of displacement, gentrification, economic disparities, famine, the environment, and geopolitics.

Chaos Anime is on view through June 8 @ Luis de Jesus Los Angeles, 1110 Mateo Street, Los Angeles, CA 90021

 
women at the beach John Valadez

John Valadez, Piernas Anime, 2017. Courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.

 

Two Men Sitting: Read Our Interview of Photographer & Curator Job Piston →

Two Men Sitting, Delfi, 30 x 40 in, lustre print, 2024. 1 AP, Ed. of 3 (option 17 x 22 in, metallic lustre print)

Muna Malik and Job Piston arrive on a Greek island sprinkled with sunflowers, daisies, and the sight of a tossed olive oil can. The two artists are gazing upon the Aegean Sea stretching out in front of them. They are in Hydra on a bench in the shadow of the Deste Project Space, not far from where they met for the first time to participate in the art and curatorial residency with ARC Athens. An oversized wind spinner with the melancholic face of the Greek god Apollo by Jeff Koons peers down over them. Apollo is often associated with sun and light, representing the illuminations of truth and knowledge. It is a fitting setting for a conversation around photography and metamorphosis, as they discuss the artist and curator Job Piston’s latest Los Angeles solo project Estate Sale. Read more.

Find Infinitude in Callum Innes' Turn @ Sean Kelly in Los Angeles

Installation view of Callum Innes: Turn at Sean Kelly, Los Angeles, March 16 – May 4, 2024, Photography: Brica Wilcox, Courtesy: Sean Kelly New York/Los Angeles

Callum Innes’ Turn at Sean Kelly in Los Angeles is an escapade into the shape. The exhibition features his latest Tondo works, alongside his Exposed Paintings, Split Paintings, and Shellac Paintings. Innes utilization of shape and color seeks to reinvent itself repeatedly. There’s a sense of playfulness with how the traditional shape can be rendered, and how the manipulation of color can transform the space within a shape. This transformation of space is what makes Innes’ work so iconic; the hardness of his rectangular and circular figures are almost intimidating. There’s a sense of intense certainty around Innes’ work: square, circle, rectangle, line. The infinite history of these figures is perhaps what makes them so sturdy in their presence; they stand in themselves like sargeants in command. There’s something calming about this sense of complete certainty; the deliberate alteration of the traditional shape is uniform, mechanical, and familiar. The occupation of space within the shape itself is what forces Innes’ work outside the confines of all that we know to be the average circular or rectangular formation. The geometric display is pervaded with different intonations of pigment, while still steadfastly holding onto the robust structure that is quintessential of Innes’ work. 

Installation view of Callum Innes: Turn at Sean Kelly, Los Angeles, March 16 – May 4, 2024, Photography: Brica Wilcox, Courtesy: Sean Kelly New York/Los Angeles

His latest exploration of the Tondo simultaneously catalyzed an experimentation with materiality. For this series of work, Innes’ circular figures are made of plywood panels. The sleekness of the surface invited a new methodology involving the application of color. This embrace of movement in process further enunciates the notion of time in Innes’ work. The infinitude of the shape is subliminally apparent; we are conscious of the fact that the standard shape is something that has always existed and will always exist. The notion of time becomes further warped across materiality, where the time spent making these forms varies and is dependent upon the surface of the work. 

Turn becomes incredibly nuanced when it’s embedded within the context of time and shape. The rotation of a circular form is ubiquitous in its implementation. To turn is to move, and to simultaneously occupy time. Innes directly engages with the advent of motion, but does so in a way that is entirely unchaotic. The structure that he gives time can be comforting, but it’s more so reflective. The sturdiness with which Innes presents abstract concepts lies at the heart of this ability for reflection; the idea of turning becomes inseparable from the idea of shape. To turn becomes reminiscent of both the infinite and finite. The end of the turn finds itself at the end of the circle, which doesn’t exist.

Installation view of Callum Innes: Turn at Sean Kelly, Los Angeles, March 16 – May 4, 2024, Photography: Brica Wilcox, Courtesy: Sean Kelly New York/Los Angeles

Turn is on view through May 4 @ Sean Kelly, 1357 N Highland Avenue Los Angeles CA

Alina Perkins Eternalizes the Ephemeral in La Fiaca @ Fernberger

Alina Perkins, La Fiaca, 2024. Image courtesy of the artist and Fernberger.

Fernberger is currently presenting La Fiaca, a solo exhibition of recent paintings and a new installation by the multidisciplinary artist Alina Perkins. In her native Argentina, la fiaca is a term used to describe a blissful, nourishing idleness—an introspective pace and productive space that she embraces to pursue intellectual meditation and creative invention. Her resulting artworks are portals into alternate, though familiar, realities—resisting the literal and functional, welcoming the surreal and sensorial.

She layers her canvases with blurred, chalky brushstrokes in verdant shades of red, orange, green, and yellow, and dusty tones of purple, blue, ivory, and slate. Each painting portrays an ambiguous object, scene, or vista: an egg seated on a plush cushion, a knife pierced into a lush field, a book open to a blank page.

La Fiaca is on view through May 11 @ Fernberger, 747 N Western Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90029

Read Our Interview of Avery Wheless on the Occasion of Her Solo Exhibition with BozoMag in Los Angeles →

Avery Wheless is a Los Angeles-based painter who was born and raised in Petaluma, California. With her mother, a ballet instructor, and her father, an animator for LucasFilms, it’s no wonder she became a painter and video artist with a penchant for the theatrical. Her video works often depict movement artists performing choreography, and her painted portraits often depict everyday people engaging in the unconscious performativity of everyday life. Her current solo exhibition Stage, Presence on view at a private residence in Beverly Hills with BozoMag includes portrayals of the artist and her friends occupying glamorous spaces, caught in moments that subtly reveal the effort that comes with looking at ease. These acts are not celebrated or bemoaned. They just are. One friend reaches into the cocktail dress of another to lift and expose the fullness of her breast in anticipation of reuniting with an ex. Other figures unwittingly become subjects as they applaud an unseen performer or spy pensively on others while sipping martinis. The pageantry of hyper femininity is as vulnerable as it is manicured when you look at it from the right angle and Avery Wheless has a way of depicting it all simultaneously like an emotional lenticular on canvas. Read more.